US TV

An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.

Monday’s “Han Solo returns?, Sarah Michelle Gellar teams up with Robin Williams and Zero Hour bombs” news

18 February 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

Film

Film casting

UK TV

US TV

US TV casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

What did you watch this week? Including Community, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Monday Mornings, Seed and Southland

15 February 2013 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

It’s “What did you watch this week?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I’ve watched this week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

First, the usual recommendations:

  • The Americans (FX/ITV).
  • Archer (FX, 5USA)
  • Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
  • Banshee (Cinemax/Sky Atlantic)
  • Being Human (US) (SyFy)
  • The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
  • Cougar Town (TBS/Sky Living)
  • Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
  • Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
  • Mr Selfridge (ITV/PBS)
  • Shameless (US) (Showtime/More4)
  • Southland (TNT/Channel 4)
  • Spartacus (Starz/Sky 1)
  • Spiral/Engrenages (BBC4/Netflix)
  • Suits (USA/Dave)
  • Top Gear (BBC2/BBC America)
  • Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic).

These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which. If I got the channels wrong, let me know and I’ll fix them

Added to that list as of Wednesday is The Americans (FX/ITV). Southland (TNT/Channel 4) is back so that’s going straight on the list again. We tried to watch the first episode of the new series of Community (NBC/Sony Entertainment Television), which would normally have been a cert to go on the list, too, but it was just so bad, the show has lost its privileges. Given that last night’s episode had the lowest ratings ever, I’m thinking I might be abandoning the show altogether soon. Netflix’s House of Cards is also going on the list.

Still in the queue: I’m whittling down the House of Cards queue; The Spa started on Sky last night but I didn’t have a chance to watch both episodes (a common theme); Zero Hour started on ABC and is apparently ludicrous, but I’ve yet to watch it. I’ve also got to watch The Blue Rose, a New Zealand show from Rachel Lang and James Griffin (the team that brought us Outrageous Fortune and The Almighty Johnsons), and the third of The Doctor Blake Mysteries was on in Australia a few hours ago – hopefully, I’ll have a third-episode verdict for you by Monday.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars.

  • Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): Nice to see Felicity the IT girl promoted to regular and it was a good move to make essentially the whole episode a flashback. Manu Bennett needs to be promoted to regular as well, although it seems a shame to make the Chinese guy less of a mentor as a result. But a cracking ep and a nice comics callout with Billy Wintergreen.
  • Banshee (Cinemax/Sky Atlantic): Less ludicrous, more of a thriller this week. Could I just mention how much I like the music by Methodical Doubt, by the way?
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Channel 5): A Batman cartoon for kids, but I thought I’d watch it anyway. Quite a good ep, based on the Book of Job. A nice touch to have long-time Batman voice Kevin Conroy as Phantom Stranger and to have Adam West and Julie Newmar (Batman and Catwoman in the 60s show) playing Bruce Wayne’s parents.
  • The Doctor Blake Mysteries (ABC1/ITV): Even better than the first episode, building up all the characters, giving us police beatings in a Life On Mars “things were different back then” style. The background to Blake and his days in military intelligence and Singapore was well handled (a call-out to McClachlan’s Heroes II?), and the final scenes with the Anzacs were actually very moving. Looking forward to the third episode.
  • Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Another duff episode that tried to give some character and decent attributes to black hanger-on detective, but did so without any real crime-solving by Holmes. Entirely obvious who the baddie was, too.
  • House of Cards (Netflix): I’m up to episode four now. It’s all beautifully made but there’s a hell of a lot of plot filler suddenly arriving out of nowhere, and Robin Wright’s charity is still ridiculous.
  • Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1): Unlike Community, this really made us laugh. Why are its ratings dropping?
  • Monday Mornings (TNT/Fox): No better than the first terrible episode, to be honest. Good to see one of the surgeons standing up for herself against Doc Oc, but it was another piece of unsurprising predictability that made me feel sick with its mawkishness. It also has the worst dialogue on TV since… the last David E Kelley drama.
  • Mr Selfridge (ITV/PBS): A mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. A Selfridge-lite episode, with Piven in bed for most of the story, we got the world’s most ridiculous ‘hair bra’ and a laughable dream sequence to roll our eyes at. But we also had a lovely reveal at the end when the Suffragettes come to the store. Next episode: John Sessions as Arthur Conan Doyle – this should be fun.
  • Seed (City TV): Funnier, nicer and cleverer than the first episode with fewer stereotypes. I’ll keep my eyes on this one since it might actually get good.
  • Shameless (US) (Showtime/More4): Another soul-destroying look into being poor in the US, mixed with marvellously politically incorrect comedy. This week, we got the discovery that sometimes, even in the worst jobs with the worst bosses, it’s better not to rock the boat and keep the guy who forces you to give him a BJ. Jody’s revelation was… fascinating, too. And good to see Harry Hamlin finding work again, too.
  • Southland (TNT/Channel 4): A more personal season than the last one, by the looks of it, which is probably a good thing since Southland is at its best when it’s dealing with smaller issue, rather than trying to deal with shootouts and arcs. Sherman’s developing in big ways, too.
  • Spartacus (Starz/Sky 1): Another slightly bland episode, more geared up to showing the squabbles among the slaves than anything else. Interesting that they’ve finally got round to giving us a gay soft porn sex scene.
  • Suits (USA/Dave): A little bit less plot than normal, with more character moments instead, so not quite the razor-sharp writing we’ve come to expect. But the Louis characterisation was well handled, making him less of a twat, and it’s good to have a US show that has a character who isn’t ‘the best of the best’, can’t have everything they want and has to admit that that to him or herself.

“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Friday’s “CBS says hello to Jason Isaacs, Netflix goes after Pablo Escabar and Jason Ritter is US Gavin, not Stacey” news

15 February 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Tidy.

Film

Comics

  • Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman et al to write for Black Mask Studios

UK TV

  • ITV developing Cabbage and Pat

US TV casting

New US TV shows

  • Netflix to make Pablo Escabar drama [subscription required]
  • CBS unlikely to order many new shows for the fall
  • Virgin Produced developing The Whisky A Go Go

New US TV show casting

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 1

Third-episode verdict: The Americans (FX/FX Canada/ITV)

14 February 2013 Rob Buckley 34 Comments

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, FX
In Canada: Wednesdays,10pm ET/PT 8pm MT, FX Canada
In the UK: Acquired by ITV

Time to report back on the first three episodes of The Americans, FX’s slice of 80s nostalgia that asks us to root for some undercover KGB agents in their never-ending fight against those crazy Americans. And I have to say that after a really good first episode, the show has only got better.

The problems with the first episode were that there was too little for Keri Russell to do, and there was no drive in the series to give any urgency to our heroes’ situation, not even the moving in of an FBI agent next door. To be honest, there was also a certain whitewashing of the KGB’s methods, too.

Episodes two and three have largely overcome these problems with the introduction of Star Wars. No, not Star Wars but the strategic defence initiative, Ronald Reagan’s attempt to neutralise the threat of Soviet nuclear missiles. Okay, with the show set in 1981, it’s a couple of years too early, but it does give the show an interesting plot drive: our agents are now trying to stop a genuine threat to the Soviet Union, albeit a hollow one, it’ll subsequently turn out.

Russell now gets things to do, even though the bulk of the action (and indeed everything else) is handled by Matthew Rhys and handled better at that, and we have the beginnings of a love story, in a sense, with Russell’s character apparently starting to fall in love with the man she married over a decade earlier. We also get more of her side of things and how she feels, having learnt already how Rhys’ character feels.

Meanwhile, the methods deployed by Rhys and Russell have started to get nastier, with Russell deploying the old ‘poison umbrella’ trick against innocents, Rhys beating the crap out of pretty much anything that moves, using women he’s charmed whenever he can, and the KGB off faking suicides left, right and centre. Our heroes are perhaps less brutal than other agents, but it’s clear they’re prepared to do what’s necessary when they have to. We also get some genuine Russian speakers speaking Russian, which is a nice touch that adds to the show’s surprisingly decent verisimilitude, even if Russell’s make-up team are refusing to give her a hairstyle or make-up from any earlier than 2010.

We also have the work of the FBI counter-intelligence agents to peruse during all of this, which makes for an interesting experience. On the one hand, you want to root for them, which normally wouldn’t be too hard. They’re clever, have good instincts and prepared to do what it takes to defend the US. But at the same time, you don’t want them to catch Rhys and Russell, and it’s fun watching how the writers manage to square the two conflicting desires. There is perhaps a bit of miscasting with the main FBI agent, who’s just not likeable enough compared to Rhys or Russell, so it’s not really as much of a dilemma for the viewer as it could be, but the producers are playing this side of things well: when the FBI agents bend the law, they actually seem like the bad guys compared to the KGB good guys.

With plenty of decent fights, tension, dense plotting, the cold war seen sympathetically from the Soviet point of view, largely likeable characters, as well as a sterling performance from Matthew Rhys, The Americans is a great show that will be going on my recommended list. However, I have literally no idea what time slot ITV might stick it in, since it’s probably way too bleak and nasty for 9pm and 10pm or later would be a waste. So catch it when you can.

Now here’s the Barrometer to give you its ratings. Bet you weren’t expecting that, but then I’m modelling this review after Zero Dark Thirty.

Barrometer rating: 1
Rob’s prediction: Should get at least a second season